Julia Roberts brings some uplift to a grating drama

Poor Erin Brockovich. a twice-divorced mother of three, she lacks money for her kids' day care and her own meal at a diner. Yet Erin (Julia Roberts) has the stash for an endless supply of trashy frocks, which she wears to job interviews, even to court as the plaintiff in a car-crash suit. They're the sort of clothes that Roberts' hooker in Pretty Woman would have rejected as way too gaudy.

The wardrobe is about as subtle as Steven Soderberg's grandstanding movie gets. As the real-life paralegal who uncovered a public-health scandal and helped win the largest civil judgment ever, Roberts...